MfM and Dll

From: Lawrence Walker <lwalker_at_mail.interlog.com>
Date: Tue Jan 12 10:31:40 1999

On 10 Jan 99 at 22:39, Don Maslin wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Jan 1999, Lawrence Walker wrote:
>
> > I picked up an HDD made for the Atari ST by ICD. It is a shoebox form and
> > has space and connectors for 2 HDs. The highly proprietory HD interface by
> > Atari (ATASCI ?) is usually directly converted to SCSI in most newer HD adapter
> > interfaces for STs.
> > In the Atari and ICD HDs the DMA output was converted to SCSI by an ICD card
> > and then to MFM or DLL. via an Adaptec 4004 (MFM) or 4070(RLL) controller.
> > This one has an Adaptec 4070. The 1 drive present is a Miniscribe 3834P .
> > I understand that some MFM drives could be coded by a RLL controller if
> > they were fast enough, etc. I have an ST4096, which according to the specs I
> > have seen is an 80 meg MFM , as well as several other smaller MFM HDs.
> > According to a spec sheet the 4096 would work with Perstor Systems ADRT
> > controllers to double the storage which would seem to indicate it was of high
> > enough speed and quality to stand the tighter coding.. Anyone know if this is
> > also true with an RLL controller or what MFM drives do work with RLL ?
> >
> > ciao larry
> > lwalker_at_interlog.com
>
> Larry, I have had good luck with any Maxtor MFM, a number of NEC 5126
> drives, and even the odd ST225. In my experience, if it will accept the
> low level format, it will probably work OK.
>
> - don
>
 Thanks Don. The main thing I wanted to know was if an MFM would indeed accept
RLL encoding. Your answer seems like a qualified yes. At least it shouldn't
screw up the HDD. I'll try the 4096 (I never knew MFM even went to that high
a capacity) and if that doesn't work I'm pretty sure I have a couple of ST225s.

ciao larry
lwalker_at_interlog.com
Received on Tue Jan 12 1999 - 10:31:40 GMT